


Grantaire and Javert Walk into a Bar (in the Afterlife)

by Secretmellowblog



Category: Les Misérables - All Media Types, Les Misérables - Victor Hugo
Genre: Afterlife, Alternate Universe - Afterlife, Awkward Conversations, Crack, Crack Treated Seriously, Fix-It, Fix-It of Sorts, Gen, Grantaire has a lot of emotions about Enjolras he doesn't know how to deal with, I just like writing the les mis characters saying silly things, Javert Quits His Job, Other, and made them have a conversation????????????????????, but in a way that's extremely bizarre and incoherent, esp because he's got his OWN complicated emotions to deal with lol, so he's just Unloading them on some stranger, this fic is an excuse to have characters I like say dumb things to each other, what if i took two of the most Socially Inept characters in canon..............., while Javert is just...............Suffering
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-05
Updated: 2021-03-05
Packaged: 2021-03-16 11:02:01
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,645
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29823945
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Secretmellowblog/pseuds/Secretmellowblog
Summary: After the events of Les Mis, Grantaire and Javert meet in the afterlife.  A lonely Grantaire tricks Javert into thinking he's an Afterlife Authority who needs to be obeyed, mainly because Grantaire is desperate for company (but also because he thinks it's funny.) The two of them have a conversation.Grantaire desperately wants validation-- but he's talking to a man who will nEVER validate him.Javert desperately wants an authority figure to give him clear coherent orders about what he should think and feel and believe-- but he's talking to a man who is physically iNCAPABLe of being coherent or clear about anything.Will the two of them be able to figure out their complicated emotional baggage??? Or will they simply have the worst conversation in the history of the afterlife?????(Note: the word count of this fic is mainly due to Grantaire talking Like That)
Relationships: 'being better at self-reflection than Javert' isn't much of an achievement though, Enjolras/Grantaire (Les Misérables), Grantaire & Javert (Les Misérables), Grantaire's feelings are also a train wreck but like. he understands them more, I think Grantaire is romantically in love with Enjolras, Javert & Jean Valjean, Javert/Jean Valjean, but Javert's feelings about Valjean are a Train Wreck, it's ambiguous though???, just a weird ambiguous Train Crash
Comments: 34
Kudos: 31





	Grantaire and Javert Walk into a Bar (in the Afterlife)

**Author's Note:**

> This fic is mainly inspired by a scene from an Italian adaptation of Les Mis where Grantaire is awake during the barricades, and spends all his time annoying Javert while Javert is tied to a chair and unable to leave. A cruel form of torture. You can find screencaps of the scene here: https://secretmellowblog.tumblr.com/post/642484099423076352/doctorthirtxxn-im-crying-over-javert-getting
> 
> The second thing that inspired me to write this was listening to George Blagden's "?" and Jean Valle's "Javert T'es Amoreaux" and being like "hmmmmm. the Parallels"
> 
> This is the first fic I've ever written that ISN'T about a wacky heist! I'm really branching out and being experimental, so I'd love to hear your thoughts :D
> 
> This is also a very tonally Weird fic? It's a crack fic, but it does take place in the afterlife immediately after the characters died, so. Content warning for discussions of death/suicide (not graphic or in-depth, but it's there)
> 
> And also, the word count makes this fic seem longer than it is. At least half of those words are just Grantaire being Grantaire

It was 2:00 AM in the afterlife. Grantaire and Javert, who had both died recently, were sitting together at a small dingy table in a dark seedy bar. They were the only ones there.

Grantaire was young, but so ugly and unkempt that he looked middle-aged. His face was stubbled and his hair was dirty. His nose was broken-- the result of an old drunken brawl. His clothes were bloodied-- the only sign of his death at the barricades. He lounged back in his chair with his feet carelessly kicked up on the table.

Les Amis had been having a reunion at another cafe in the aferlife. But after all that had happened during the rebellion, Grantaire had been afraid to face them. Dying by their side meant he could no longer pretend he Didn’t Care; being around them would be a lot more difficult and vulnerable. And so he had chosen not to join them. 

But he had also been afraid of drinking alone. 

That was the contradiction at the heart of Grantaire’s personality: he needed people to think he didn’t care about anything. BUT he also needed to be surrounded by people at all times, so they could give him constant external Validation.

So Grantaire had stalked the empty streets of the afterlife, searching for anyone else to drink with--anyone else in the undead world—and eventually he found one.

Near the Bridge of Austerlitz he’d stumbled across an extremely bizarre-looking stranger. He was a tall glowering man with piercing eyes, a snub nose, a permanent-looking scowl, and thick grey sideburns that looked like whiskers. He was dressed in a long grey coat that was (for whatever reason) drenched with river-water. The stranger looked like a horrible drowned wolf-dog in a top hat. He looked like the world’s most frightening and problematic furry. 

His name was Javert. 

Grantaire had invited Javert to a bar, and Javert had glowered at him. 

“I have no time for you.” Javert had growled, stalking away. His coat, which was inexplicably soaking wet, dripped on the pavement. “I’m looking for—whoever’s an authority here.”

“You’ve found him!” Grantaire had happily lied. Then he’d clapped his hand on Javert’s shoulder, like a man petting an angry feral dog that really doesn’t want to be pet. “I, Grantaire, AM an important authority here in the afterlife! I am a horrible authority, the worst one here-- but I can give you Orders, and it will all be very Official!”

And Javert had suddenly become compliant, and obediently followed Grantaire to a bar. 

So that’s where they were now—in a dingy bar, alone. Grantaire was leaning back with his feet kicked up on the table, while Javert was sitting stiffly in his chair with eyes downcast like a criminal in the presence of his judge.

Javert tried to give Grantaire a brief Report of who he was— how he used to belong to the Paris police, was formerly an Inspector —- but Grantaire cut him off very quickly. 

“Listen closely, Monsieur Le-Ex-Inspector, Monsieur Le Loup,” Grantaire said, filling up a glass of wine, “I shall begin the instruction, the lecture, necessary to teach you the ways of the afterlife. I am an authority here—-as much as any other man, some might say, as all men die; but more, because I spent all my life dying, practicing for oblivion by drinking until I Iost all memory, and attaining wisdom thereby. But all men spend their lives dying, all in their own way. No matter. I have always had the wisdom of Silenus, and have followed behind divine Dionysus on my donkey; and I rode my donkey here to the afterlife, and that means I am an authority.”

Javert responded to this gibberish by nodding humbly, his eyes downcast. He was waiting for Orders. He wasn’t sure what his feelings about Authority were anymore—-but his instinct was to obey it, to mutely follow any person in a position of power who told him what to do. 

And yes, he decided, a man as Strange as this could be an Authority—- it wasn’t any more senseless than anything else. 

“You may say ‘Monsieur Grantaire, why are you not with your friends?’ Alas, I have not the stomach for it. My friends were my only joy when I was alive; I watched their forms move through the fumes of wine like Plato’s men watching the shadows on the walls of the cave. They are the men; I am the shadow. I am a fog that searches for a vapor—“

Javert’s look of respectful submission began to turn to confusion.

“And perhaps the vapor I searched for was death itself; how the soul longs for the shroud! Alas, are we not all moths, drawn to the light of that which dooms us? As Icarus longed for the sun, so I longed for the blonde hair of my Orestes. An Orestes who refused me! I am an unaccepted Pylades. I am like a knight whose noble lover has refused him; oh I could’ve been so courtly, I could’ve done so much for him if he had asked it, I would’ve proved my love a thousand times over.”

“Or I wouldn’t have. He would’ve given me a thousand tasks and I would have failed them all. I would have failed to prove my love a thousand times over. “But let me try,” I want to tell him, “let me try so I can fail. We all know I will fail. But have mercy, and let me try. That is all we can do, all of humanity—- try to prove our love, and fail.”

“Have you ever heard the song of Lancelot?”

Javert, who looked deeply confused and a little irritated, didn’t answer. That didn’t matter because Grantaire wasn’t really asking and plowed on without waiting for his response:

“He had a song; he sang it one of the legends— but I’ve forgotten it. I have forgotten Lancelot’s song; his song is forgotten. And this proves all our songs are destined to be forgotten, especially the songs of love! If a drunken brute such as myself can forget the love song of one so great as Lancelot, there is no hope that anyone has any cause to remember the love song of a drunken brute such as myself. Such is life! Such is the fate of all men! We are all the quickly forgotten fragments of songs in the mind of a drunken god who shall forget them all in the morning—“

Javert began scowling confusedly. Grantaire spent the next hour regaling Javert with half-coherent stories about his life and friends and tragic death, as well as the General Difficulty and Vanity of Existence. His rants were full of bizarre references to obscure poetry and mythology that only Grantaire himself would understand— or that even Grantaire himself did not understand. He was semi-coherent when he wanted to be and incoherent when it captured his Feelings better. Grantaire was not talking  _ to _ Javert, he was talking  _ at _ him. He might as well have been talking to a block of granite.

As the agonizingly slow hours crawled by, Javert’s brows furrowed, and the light that appeared in his eyes when Grantaire said he was an “authority” began to slowly die out. The look of confused irritation on his face grew deeper and deeper. 

Grantaire didn’t really notice this (he just liked knowing that Someone was listening). He talked on and on, primarily about the meaning of love, especially unrequited love with tragic endings.

“I prefer the sun of Icarus to the sun of Hyacinth,” Grantaire expostulated after about an hour of rambling. “I do not want Apollo to caress me with gentle sunbeams; I long for him to strike me with his rays. I suffer the pangs of Pylades but I long for the fate of Megara. I long to be strangled by the hands of a God, not to be caressed by them. I only want to serve him, as a knight would serve his lady; yet I am a man; I can accept the punishment I deserve, if he were only willing to give it to me. To die of love is to live by it. I long to feel the loving hug of Hercules’ hands around my neck, the deep wet kiss of Judas on my shuddering lips; I long to be crushed under the weight of his divine embrace, to trespass in his godly boudoir, to writhe beneath him in his forbidden bed—“

The look on Javert’s face had gradually changed from “irritation” to “oh I see what this is—- I’m in hell. This is my punishment and I’m in hell i’m in hell i’m in HELL—”

“My theory, as I have told other men and must now tell you, is that Aphrodite is poor, she cannot make ends meet, and so most love is cheap,” Grantaire pontificated after another hour passed. “There is so much misery on earth and in heaven because mankind is sold a cheap imitation of what love ought to be. It’s all a counterfeit. The roses in a lover’s blush are not roses anymore; they’re painted on, daubed on with the cheapest red acrylic—(I studied among art students so I can detect those sorts of counterfeits.) And your beloved’s teeth aren’t pearls either; they are ugly little bones painted to look pearlescent. And the white stars shining in your beloved’s eyes, they’re not stars at all! They’re the places where the canvas pokes through under the paint; for God was lazy, and did not even finish painting the eyes. Most of what men call love is false, counterfeits that could be painted by any drunken art student. Even I could paint a romance for myself, if I were not so stupid and lazy. That is one of my theories.I have a great many theories. I will tell you all of them tonight.”

Javert’s eyes were blank. He looked as if he was trying to win a prize for being the most well-behaved sinner in hell. He looked as if he was trying to get a good grade in “being tortured in hell,” something he thought that it was both normal to want and possible to achieve. 

“There is no greater bliss than to die for love. All the noble ancient heroes die for the ones they love, arm in arm, hand in hand. What greater bliss could there be, than to die holding the hand of the man you love? There is none. And yet it is the act of a coward, ” Grantaire cried passionately some time later.

“Dying for the man you love is cowardice, I say! I am a coward. To live for love is what takes courage! To roll in a field with your lover, to do as he asks and win his favor— that is braver than a revolution.”

“They say Achilles was a hero because he died for Patroclus. The truth is that Achilles was lazy and a coward and a drunk; he stayed in his tent, hungover, until the most valuable battle was already lost, and his dear beloved was already doomed. After all that mattered to him was lost it was very easy for him to wake up and leave his tent and pretend to care, and then die in a furious bliss for the man he loved. That was the sort of useless man Achilles was! He hoped a good death would redeem him for being lazy and careless and bad at mathematics! That was the sort of man Achilles was, and it’s the sort of man we all are.”

“I am a coward; but even Achilles was a coward. We are all cowards, but I am the worst of them.”

Grantaire attempted to take a sip of wine, but his glass was empty.

“Ah, see! Even the wine in my glass runs out so quickly,” Grantaire said, throwing his empty glass behind him so that it shattered against the wall. “All of our glasses are empty; all of mankind--- we are all trying to drink out of empty glasses! It’s all in vain. And I am a coward.”

Grantaire stared at Javert, waiting for a reaction. He was waiting for Javert to reassure him that he wasn’t a coward--or for Javert to tell him that he WAS a coward. He was waiting for a disagreement, for a rebuke, for a counterargument, for any expression of frustration or annoyance. He was waiting for anything.

But Javert only continued to stare down at the table without meeting his eyes. He looked as if he was (very humbly and obediently and patiently) waiting for Grantaire to kill him and finally put him out of his misery. 

Grantaire wanted everyone to think that he didn’t care about their opinion of him. He definitely wanted Javert to think he was completely indifferent and careless, and didn’t care about Javert’s opinion of him.

But at the same time, Grantaire was obsessed with getting constant external validation at all times. He NEEDED people to tell him “Grantaire, we’re listening to you!” or “Grantaire, your hopeless attitude towards life is very wrong and there is still hope!” or “Grantaire you are very pitiable!” or “Grantaire we love your incoherent rants and think you’re so witty and funny!” or “Grantaire you need to believe in yourself more!” 

Javert was not doing any of that. 

Grantaire was finally starting to find Javert’s refusal to validate him  _ very _ annoying. He NEEDEd validation. And somehow he was going to mAKE Javert give it to him. 

He swung his feet down from the table, grabbed another glass, and poured himself more wine while looking at Javert thoughtfully. 

“I knew you looked familiar, when I saw you— it’s because you bear a striking resemblance to the statue that the Italians call  _ La Lupa Capitolina _ ! I don’t mean that you resemble the infant Remus or Romulus, of course; I mean that you resemble the wolf who nursed them.”

Javert glared at Grantaire in stony silence. 

“You have the same whiskers,” Grantaire drunkenly continued, thinking Javert didn’t get the joke. He gestured at Javert’s thick grey sideburns.

Javert‘s expression did not change.

“What I mean is: you have done enough nursing of Roman kings; it’s time for you to nurse yourself-- with this!”

Grantaire gestured at the wine bottle. Javert stared at it. His face was as simple and impassive as a block of granite.

“Drunkenness would do you good. Your lack of gaiety disturbs me. You offend my sight; sitting there like the statue of Chastisement cast whole in the mold of the Law, the very personification of Judgement, the bulldog of society, Brutus in Vidocq--!”

“I resigned from the police-- from all of it,” Javert growled dismissively.

“Then resign from sobriety!” 

Javert cast him a quietly haughty look, but remained silent.

“The opposite of law is drunkenness-- so I have found, many nights, locked up for public intoxication. You may have been one of the officers who arrested me; or may not have been, all police are the same. And drunkenness is the clearest expression of disdain for the police. Arresting people costs money; you are arrested for being too drunk; therefore, when you are drunk, you are wasting the State’s money. Ergo drunkenness is activism. Rebellions are intoxicating, yet intoxication is also rebellion. And yet like all rebellion, it is-- alas-- futile.”

Javert stared at him.

“This is all to say: you haven’t truly resigned unless you’ve had a drink,” Grantaire continued. He poured Javert a glass of wine, and Javert watched the glass fill with the same flat, impassive expression.

“And now, a toast!” Grantaire said. Javert did not react. He looked like a statue that had been set up in the wrong room and was waiting to be put away. 

“A toast---to our misspent lives and our inevitable deaths!” Javert’s glass was still sitting on the table untouched, and his arms were still folded. Grantaire ignored this and tapped Javert’s glass with his own anyway. 

“There is but one reality— drink.” Grantaire went on. “So I told my compatriots when we were still alive; among them, I was considered an Authority on these matters.”

“An authority on what, exactly.” Javert asked in a flat voice.

“I am an Authority on matters of drinking and despair,” Grantaire boasted. “I am an Authority on being a disaster; an Authority on being a disappointment; an Authority on throwing one’s life away, an authority on self-destruction, even suicide, one may say.”

Javert’s expression changed slightly. 

“An authority on suicide,” Javert repeated. There was no emotion in his voice. 

“Yes, yes I am; the wretched of the earth come to me with their troubles, and I tell them the truth of how they should live under the crushing weight of the world’s inevitable mindless cruelty — not that they listen; I take after the lovely Cassandra. She would’ve made a lovely wife, and I a terrible husband, if I had chosen to marry a woman, if I could’ve been capable of marrying one; alas. It was not to be. Alas for Cassandra, and alas for Grantaire! For the love that could never be, and for the one that could’ve been! All love is a losing game played by fools who long to die— love is self-destruction—-those who tell us love is doomed to fail and end in tragedy are our modern Cassandras!” Grantaire made a sweeping gesture with his arm, then downed his glass of wine in one gulp. 

Javert didn’t understand what any of that meant (he had stopped listening after “yes.”). But the emotions of the past few days and his violent suicide were severely clouding Javert’s judgement— although he would never admit that to himself. He was in disarray. His clothes were as neat as he could make them, but they were still cold with the waters of the Seine. He was not thinking rationally. 

“If you are the afterlife’s authority on suicide,” Javert said, speaking to Grantaire the way he spoke to Mayor Madeleine when he attempted to get himself fired all those years before-- “I have a grave matter that I should bring to your attention.”

“Matters! Drink is the only thing that matters; you must have a drink first.”

Grantaire gestured to the glass in front of Javert. 

Javert looked as if he’d been ordered to drink poison. (Although it’s important to note that if an authority ordered Javert to drink poison, he would definitely drink it. Or at least he *would* have, before Valjean and the barricades happened.) 

“You need me to speak  _ clearly _ first,” Javert growled. 

“There’s nothing like wine for loosening one’s tongue.”

Javert scowled. 

“You have so much distaste for the finer things in life,” Grantaire sighed. “Where were you born? In a nunnery?”

“In a prison.”

“I understand-- aren’t we  _ all _ born in prisons?” Grantaire sermonized. “The prison is called Existence; the bars are our fear of death; we slaved away behind them, and for what? Said Epictus: You are a little soul, carrying a corpse. Said Aeschylus: Better to die once and for all than to suffer pain for all my life. The prison is a metaphor for--”

“It wasn’t a metaphor. My mother was a criminal, and my father a galley slave.”

“But have you ever considered that all of our mothers are criminals, and all of our fathers slaves? All women are infamous; femme sounds like infamme; there is a reason for that. But men have nothing to boast of either; we are all brutes. Have you, poor stone wolf of the law, ever thought that all existence is a prison? That your life was a prison cell you could not leave? That we all bear crimes deep in our hearts? That we are all all bound together in the chain gang called humanity; that all of our hands are in the cuffs called the Agony of existence, that we all are living within the prisons of our own minds, and your life is only there to close around you like the walls of a cell?“

“No.”

“My throat is too hoarse to explain it to you,” Grantaire sighed. “Here are my orders: you’ll tell me your sordid story as I rest my voice and then I’ll give you my Authoritative Authority advice on it, the way you want me to—- and in return you’ll have a glass of wine, like I want you to.”

Javert agreed.

Then Javert told Grantaire about Toulon, hounding Valjean to the point of persecution, years of cruelty in the service of the police, Claquesous, the barricades, Enjolras, the National Guard shooting Jehan Prouvaire, Valjean saving his life, letting Valjean go-- recounting all of it as if he were simply listing off things that had happened to a stranger he had no emotional connection to. He described his final mental breakdown with a cold precision, honesty, and exactness. There was nothing in his soul that was not on his face-- Grantaire understood that every word he said was true.

The candle on the table burned down between them, and the air grew darker.

“And so—“ Javert finished calmly with downcast eyes, as if ending an ordinary police report, his granite face expressing total honesty but betraying no emotion— “I turned in my resignation to my superiors. And then I walked to the Pont d’Austerlitz and turned in my resignation to God.”

Javert was so honest that his entire soul was visible in his clear, pure eyes. He looked up at Grantaire as if asking (or begging) for orders—begging for an authority to overrule his autonomy, to crush his agency, to give him clear ORDERS about what to think and feel and do and destroy him if he refused to obey. He waited for Grantaire’s response. 

“Oof,” Grantaire responded. 

“As agreed, I’ll have that drink.”

“No, no, I was only joking when I said you had to,” Grantaire said. He was beginning to feel a little sorry for the scary wolfman. “You don’t have to drink anything—“

“I do.”

“You don’t.”

“But I do.”

“As an authority on drinking,” Grantaire said breezily, “I’ve rescinded my order—-”

“I swore that I would!” Javert snarled, snatching his glass off the table before Grantaire could move it away. He mechanically drank it all in one breath, grimacing in disgust at the taste, and then slammed the empty glass on the table with such FORCE that it cracked. 

There was another long, painfully awkward silence.

“I take it that was your first glass of wine,” said Grantaire, trying to break the tension, “How did it taste?”

“Horrible.”

“What a tragedy!” Grantaire said, returning right back to his usual cynical mocking tone. “This is why one cannot bring a Spartan to the altar of Dionysus; the Spartan is unimpressed. Dionysus is not his God.”

Javert stared. His eyes were hollow and dead. 

“Pardon me, I forgot your distaste for metaphors. You are a literal man, I am a metaphorical one-- you drown yourself in a river, while I am content with drowning myself in wine.” 

Saying this, Grantaire filled himself another glass. 

“But my primary Authoritative opinion is this: your story is very tragic of course, like all stories. But it really is a pity that we never learned what happened to Monsieur-Many-Names, your wandering bread thief vagabond.”

“I let him go,” Javert said gruffly, as if hating to admit it to himself. 

“But you never told him that you let him go.”

Javert stiffened.

“You left a note for Monsieur le Prefect; you could have left a note for Monsieur le Bread Thief." Grantaire had never been good at being sincere and vulnerable; so he had decided to treat Javert's life story like another Ironic thought experiment, another myth, another story to play with. "Your convict must’ve felt nothing but bafflement at your behavior; not knowing if or when you would return! He must’ve assumed you went mad. Perhaps he panicked and turned himself in anyway— what a joke that would be!” 

Javert’s face contracted.

“Yes, perhaps he turned himself in, the way the father of Theseus threw himself off the cliff of Crete when he saw the black sails of the ship coming into the harbor. You saved him, and he took it as a condemnation. What a cruel irony that would be. But alas; who among us has not neglected to take down the black flags on our ships? All of mankind is cruel through ignorance; we wound our fathers and our Monsieur-le-Convict's with our indifference and forgetfulness.”

Javert didn’t know what half of that was supposed to mean, but he scowled. His elbows were on the table and his fingers were twined in his whiskers. His gaze flitted up to Grantaire, then settled back down on the broken empty wine glass.

“But don’t ask me about love! Don’t ask me about Enjolras,” Grantaire said, hoping (as he had all night) that Javert would ask him about love and Enjolras.

Javert did not. 

“You and your Monsieur-Many-Names, Monsieur le Bread Thief— I understand what it’s like between you two,” Grantaire said anyway. “It’s the old story. You take his hand--- after years of wronging him, you give him a moment of peace-- perhaps he even permits it— and then a moment later, the two of you are dead. You have not saved him. Perhaps there’s comfort in that, the comfort of the intertwined skeletons—;”

Grantaire downed his glass of wine. He was talking to himself again, and didn’t notice that his “conversation partner” was tensing up like a trapped animal backed into a corner.

“For the first time in your life, you rebel--” Grantaire continued miserably. ““I am with him,” you say at last. “I am one of them,” you say.”

“And it does not save him; your act of pity meant nothing; he is determined to die, he has chosen —-“

Javert slammed his large fist on the table. Grantaire started.

“If that convict threw his freedom away-- after I gave it to him!— it’s not my responsibility!” Javert snarled.

Grantaire stared at him confusedly. He had completely forgotten he was supposed to be talking about Valjean, and “whether Valjean had turned himself in after Javert let him go,” and “whether Javert’s mercy actually meant anything.” Grantaire had lost that train of thought completely. He had boarded a completely new train of thought and was barreling down a completely different track miles and miles away. So he was completely confused. He had no idea why Javert was upset. He had entirely forgotten what he’d said to make Javert so angry. 

But as he looked at Javert--- whose face was contorted into a horrifying snarl that bared all his teeth as if he was preparing to pounce on Grantaire and shred him to pieces-- he realized that (whatever he said) he must have gone Too Far.

“If I could make that felon’s choices for him—ha! If only!” Javert barked furiously, his words blending together so that they sounded more like the growls of a beast. “Then I would’ve died  _ properly, _ and we wouldn’t have to be speaking with each other!”

“How tragic that you had to meet me—“ Grantaire began, but it was finally Javert’s turn to incoherently ramble.

“Am I his  _ nursemaid  _ now—is that it!? That’s very fine! Inspector Javert of the Paris Police, resigning from the government service to become the worried  _ nursemaid  _ of a damned  _ galley-slave--  _ groveling and worshiping and licking the boots of a criminal— whimpering over the health of that man like a slavering dog whining for its master— Is that how low I’ve fallen?!”

Javert’s eyes were so clear that you could see his conscience in them. He looked as if he desperately longed to dissolve through the table and drown himself in the floorboards.

“It is,” he said suddenly, in a miserable and broken voice. “Damn it all. It is.” 

And Javert sank back in his chair, and buried his face in his trembling hands.

Grantaire realized he’d accidentally-- well, intentionally-- struck a nerve. He’d somehow blindly stumbled onto a part of Javert that was extremely unstable and insecure. 

Maybe if he prodded this rare vulnerable spot in Javert enough, Javert would give him Validation. 

Or maybe Javert would tear him to shreds. But it was worth a shot. 

“Do you loathe yourself that terribly? I’m not the best man to ask for advice about hating oneself—or I am the best man, as I have a wealth of experience with it— but if you talk—“

“I can’t talk about him. I have no _ right. _ ”

“Right--?”

“I have no right to praise a convict but I have no right to speak ill of a saint. I have no right to venerate a criminal but no right to find fault with an angel--there’s nothing—!” Javert’s hands clenched in frustration. 

“Then allow me to write the metaphors for you,” Grantaire suggested.

Javert snarled and buried his face deeper in his hands. Grantaire needed no further encouragement.

“It’s a terrible situation you’re in-- to be touched!” Grantaire put his hand on his heart. “To be granite and to doubt! To be the watch-dog, and to fawn! To be ice and to melt! to be the pincers, and to turn into a hand! What a terrible thing-- to realize that beneath your breast of bronze you cherish something absurd and disobedient that could almost be called a  _ heart.” _

Javert said nothing. Grantaire took this as agreement and continued:

“Your code is a stump in your hand, your laws are all in ruin; you have realized your black-and white world is missing color. You are dazzled and hear violins playing in your mind. You have fallen down the worst of slopes; so the incorruptible servant of the law finds himself reading the advice column in the newspaper. Everything that was order has been revealed to be disorder; everything that seemed solid has turned to water; and above all the jumble and confusion of a vanquished society stands a bread thief with a halo on his brow--such is the confusion that has fallen over your soul! You don’t believe in anything, but you believe in him,” Grantaire cried in his most dramatic and poetic voice.

Javert grunted. 

“And that is why you avoided speaking to him about any of it, I see now. You were afraid that your angel would hurt you, of course; call you incapable of thought or belief or living or dying--“

“That he  _ wouldn’t _,” Javert snarled, lowering his hands. 

Grantaire looked disarmed.

“What do you mean?”

“His kindness enraged me quite enough when it was for other people. I did not want it for myself,” Javert said firmly, his eyes downcast. “He doesn’t punish people— I couldn’t bear it—!!!“ 

Javert’s words dissolved into incoherent indignant snarling.

“I understand. I know a man like him,” Grantaire sighed wistfully. He was trying once again to get Javert to ask him about Enjolras. 

“You don’t.” Javert growled. 

“Oh alas, but I do! And I understand your struggle.” Grantaire said miserably. “Enjolras disdains me, I know, yet he is kind to me when I don’t deserve it. He doesn't love me, I am a wretch to him, yet he refuses to truly punish me, he extends so much forgiveness to me. Oh, it’s a curse, Javert. You understand this curse. We suffer under the same ailment.”

“We don’t.” Javert said flatly. 

Grantaire suddenly got out of his chair and walked over to Javert’s side of the table. 

Then he threw his arms around Javert in a big, sloppy hug. 

“I—!” Javert snarled, recoiling like a feral bulldog being hugged by a very determined toddler. 

“We are so alike!” Grantaire pontificated. He was a boxer, so he hugged Javert as firmly as if he were putting him in a chokehold. “We are so similar, we are kindred souls. I can feel that we are kindred souls. We are the refused Pylades— the ugly counterpart of a man who needs no counterpart, he ugly other half of a man who doesn’t need an ‘other half,’ created to be the guard dog for a man who doesn’t want a dog, put on earth to serve a man who had no use for us.”

Javert submitted to Grantaire’s drunken hug with the irritated indifference of a man who was *accustomed* to having his personal autonomy violently overruled by some authority that he was powerless to fight back against. He raised his head and leaned back in the chair with the same exact look of scornful resignation he’d worn while tied to a post at the barricades. He seemed to be waiting for Grantaire to snap his neck and kill him, and would’ve seen that as a relief. 

Instead Grantaire victoriously tightened his grip and nuzzled into Javert’s shoulder.

“And perhaps it’s not just the two of us. Perhaps that’s what all  _ humanity _ is—-the useless counterpart to God and his angels. The angels are perfect, they are wonderful, they are complete, they have no use for humanity. Angels do not need an ‘other half.’ Sainthood does not need a counterpart. The divine does not need men.And yet we exist!”

Grantaire was hugging Javert in his chair from behind, and the chair was starting to dig into his skin and become uncomfortable. Javert’s coat was also cold and damp, and he smelled like river-water. Grantaire was aware that his own breath smelled like wine, which was probably part of why Javert was grimacing so deeply. It was extremely awkward and uncomfortable for both of them. But Grantaire was too stubborn to let go.

“We exist. Cruel, wretched, cowardly, depraved; prone to self-sabotage and self-destruction; useless, doomed to fail, with nothing to offer, mankind exists. And angels like Enjolras and Monsieur Le Convict do not need us. We get an opportunity to help them, we try, we fail. They can show us mercy or punish us, that is all; and after they’ve made their choice we’re left alone, in our barren unpoetic human lives, to try to understand what they meant to us.”

Javert stared blankly at the wall. The “I’m in hell” expression was on his face again. His only response to Grantaire’s rant was a small huff of disapproval, like the kind that dogs do when they’re mildly annoyed. He was like a proud elderly chihuahua trying to remain Dignified while being hugged by an obnoxious human baby. 

“Have you ever thought about any of this, Monsieur le Bulldog?” 

Javert stared at the wall for a few long moments, looking as if he wanted to drown himself several more times just to escape this conversation. 

“I hate thinking,” Javert growled. 

“I also hate thinking, we have that in common. Yet I can’t stop myself from doing it.”

“Or from saying every thought that comes into your head, evidently,” Javert grumbled. 

“Nor from that, either,” Grantaire sighed. “It’s a curse.”

Javert huffed. 

“I’m starting to realize I may not be able to help you,” Grantaire lamented. “Perhaps because you’re too much like me; that is, a lost cause. A cautionary tale. Created by God to show people what Not to do and who Not to be.”

“I thought you were an authority.”

“I lied to you, Monsieur.”

Javert closed his eyes in quiet disdain. “Of course.”

“But I do know people who are Better than me, and who may be able to help you,” Grantaire said. “My friends— Les Amis de l’ABC.”

Javert grimaced. 

“I know you’ve met them before, in less than friendly circumstances. You were trying to get them all killed— you bad dog!”

Grantaire poked Javert’s sideburns. Javert glared at him and opened one corner of his mouth in a silent snarl. 

“You were very lucky that you got to be tied up by Enjolras,” Grantaire sighed. “I wish he would’ve done that to me.”

Javert did not understand or react to that. 

“But that’s not what's important. What's important, what I mean to say, is….”

Grantaire struggled to find the words. He was so used to speaking Ironically that any kind of honesty or earnestness was difficult for him. 

“I don’t think all of them will forgive you. I don’t think they all should forgive you,” he said awkwardly. It was a lot harder to string words together when he was trying to say things that he actually Meant. “But they help and teach people, even men like me who aren’t very good. It's why I’ve been hiding from them like the coward I am; hiding from them the way you hid from Monsieur Le Bread Thief. I talk and talk yet say nothing at all; but they understand things, and believe things, and have faith that nonsense like love and hope and justice really do exist. You seem as if you want someone to help you understand how the world works. I am very stupid and don’t understand any of it, and it was very wrong of you to talk to me. You shouldn’t be talking to me; you ought to talk to them.”

Javert didn’t answer. 

“I’ll tell them not to kill you or tie you up again. I’ll claim that you’re my new friend— or my new pet bulldog, who is very tall, and yet I’ve adopted him anyway. But come with me.”

Javert stared blankly at the wall, his eyes as hollow as the eyes of a corpse.

“Is that an order.” Javert said flatly.

“No,” Grantaire said. “It’s a suggestion. I’ve had enough fun ordering you around tonight; it’s not entertaining anymore. My last order to you as an authority: I order you to make your own decisions.” 

He let go of Javert and stood up. 

Javert looked at him strangely, and then lowered his eyes, looking at the cracked wine glass on the table. Then Javert began to straighten his coat and collar, which Grantaire had disorganized with his hug. He straightened his sleeves and obsessively Fixed the buttons on his coat. He pretended not to notice Grantaire looking at him. 

Grantaire casually walked out of the bar. Javert didn’t follow him. 

Grantaire stood outside, alone, looking at the stars and the long line of dark buildings on the street. The streets of the afterlife were like the streets of Paris, but blue and bare and empty, like an unfinished painting, or a story that hadn’t been finished. It was like a version of Paris that was underwater, sunken like Atlantis. He knew that Les Amis would still be at their cafe, a short walk away; he hoped he would not have to go there alone. 

Grantaire waited. The wind blew. He held his breath. 

He was about to lose hope when the door to the bar swung open-- and Javert stalked out, scowling and adamantly refusing to meet his eyes.

“You’re joining me!” Grantaire cried happily. For the first time all night, he felt Validated. “I knew that you would.”

Javert grumbled something under his breath and pretended to be adjusting the buttons on his coat.

“Oh, my friends will be so impressed when I tell them I have managed to wrangle a real werewolf, and recruit him to our side,” Grantaire said as the two of them began to walk in the direction of the cafe where Les Amis were meeting. 

Javert snarled, rolled his eyes, and pretended to be busy straightening out the sleeves of his coat. But he still followed Grantaire. 

“Do you know you’re the first man I’ve ever really recruited?” Grantaire said wistfully. “My friends will say: ‘Grantaire, we thought you were only good for drinking and playing dominoes. But you are good for something after all!“

“Perhaps all of us are good for something after all.’”

— the end —-

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading!! I hope this was somewhat coherent lol.
> 
> The original ending of the fic was very different. It was like: Javert does his usual Rant about HATING KINDNESS and not wanting to be forgiven. Then Grantaire "reassures" him that "if there's anyone Valjean or God would refuse to forgive, it'd be you. You're the most awful obnoxious man I've ever met." Javert looks up hopefully-- and then scowls, snarls that Grantaire is "only saying that to be kIND" and storms away in disgust. But then I realized that I love both of these train wrecks and wanted to give them a more hopeful ending!!! asdfjsdlfs 
> 
> Anyway yeah this is just an overlong version of the kind of posts I write on my tumblr @secretmellowblog, if you want to talk to me there! :D


End file.
